By Joan McCarter ……..2017/12/05·09:5 ……..The massive social reengineering project that the GOP called a tax bill wasn’t just designed to redistribute wealth from the bottom up and to reward Republicans’ corporate donors, though it did all that. It was designed very specifically to punish Democrats—and not just elected Democrats but voters, too. You know, the people all those elected officials are supposed to be representing. The thing is, they’re not even making a secret of that. And to make it even more enraging, they’re blaming that on the Democrats.

Benefits used by universities and graduate students are also on the chopping block. And the repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate to buy insurance — a centerpiece of Democrats’ biggest achievement in a generation — is estimated to generate some $300 billion to pay for tax cuts.

"It’s death to Democrats," said conservative economist Stephen Moore, who advised Trump’s campaign on tax policy.

"They go after state and local taxes, which weakens public employee unions. They go after university endowments, and universities have become play pens of the left. And getting rid of the mandate is to eventually dismantle Obamacare," Moore said in an interview, arguing that it would accelerate "a death spiral" in the health-care law’s marketplaces. […]

"The people who are going get the most whacked by this are wealthy and upper-middle class people who live in big cities," said John Feehery, a GOP lobbyist and former communicator for House leadership. "In other words, Democrats."

"I don’t think there’s a conspiracy to go attack Democratic districts. But that’s how the legislative process works—if you’re not going to participate in a game you’re going to lose," he said. "You need the revenue, and those constituencies are not really being represented because their representatives refused to participate."